So if I can’t modify or add indexes and I can’t change code, how do I get my query times to drop? Query Store to the rescue.

I love to tune queries. I feel so satisfied to see the times dropping on my server as I tune things. Recently, I have been tracking my Batch Requests per Second and my Instance Waits to see if I am making improvements when I tune. It has been awesome!

What I am going to show you today is how I dig into my query store to find those misbehaving queries and make their performance better. First I go into a database’s properties to make sure my query store is turned on:

There are a ton of best practice posts on query store sizes and settings, we aren’t talking about that in this post. This is just an example of what it can look like with the most important part being the Operation Mode (Actual) at the top says “Read Write”.

If the query store was just barely turned on, give it at least 30 minutes to run before expecting it to show much. It may even take up to a day to get a good idea of what is happening.

My two favorite reports are Top Resource Consuming Queries and Regressed Queries.

I start by looking at the Top Resource Consuming Queries (I use the same process for Regressed Queries).

I will click on a bar in the chart and it will turn green. Then I will hit the “track query” button to the right of the “refresh” button just above the chart.

This query was more stable yesterday. I will look at all the plans available (I will even select “Configure” in the top right corner and change to look at a full month instead of the last day to see if I can find a better plan). I will then click the plan I like best and select the “Force Plan” button. SQL Server will verify the plan number and ask if I am sure, I check that it is the right one and then select “yes”. Next I will refresh until I see my newly pinned plan show up. If my plan doesn’t show up, but a new plan does, I will compare the new plan with the one I wanted. If they have the same shape, I know that is what SQL is putting in place for my forced plan and I will force the new one instead to keep it consistent.

Now I watch and see how the new forced plan behaves. If it goes horribly wrong, I will unforce it. If it is healthy and doing what I want, I move to the next query to see if I can help it.

Disclaimer: Query store won’t solve all the problems, but it can be a way to temporarily fix performance issues. I keep an eye on my pinned queries and make sure I watch for when changes hit the system. I also have alarms for when things start to run long so I can quickly diagnose performance issues. If Indexes are changed or code is modified, it can affect forced plans.

The song for this post is Fallin’ by Why Don’t We , it makes me want to dance every time I hear it.